Clerics were to be degraded from their orders, lay persons were to be branded as infamous and not be admitted to public offices or councils or to run a business, will not have the freedom to make a will nor shall succeed to an inheritance, goods were to be confiscated.
A secular leader who "neglects to cleanse his territory of this heretical filth" would be excommunicated and the supreme pontiff could declare his vassals absolved from their fealty to him and make the land available for occupation by Catholics who would possess it unopposed and preserve it in the purity of the faith.
[note 1][6] While the Inquisition refrained from condemning either Copernicus or his book (or Galileo) on the basis of this assessment, several theological claims in De revolutionibus were ordered to be excised in future publications.
The inquisitor told him that the inquisition were not accustomed to stopping visitors or travellers unless someone had suggested they do so (Bargrave suspected that Jesuits in Rome had made accusations against him).
Among the subjects of this Inquisition were Franciscus Patricius, Giordano Bruno, Tommaso Campanella, Gerolamo Cardano, Cesare Cremonini and Camilla Erculiani an Italian apothecary, writer, natural philosopher, and a women's advocate.
Feminist scholars Claudia Honeger and Nelly Moia saw the early modern witch-craze as a product of Inquisitorial influence, namely the Malleus Maleficarum.
[16][17] Feminist writers Mary Daly, Barbara Walker, and Witch Starhawk argued that the Inquisitions were responsible for countless, "hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions", deaths, most of them women.
In his book, The Grand Inquisitor's Manual: A History of Terror in the Name of God, Kirsch argued that the Inquisition's use of torture not only applied to the witch-craze which peaked in early 17th century, but also to the Salem witch trials.
This model of repressive system, Kirsch argued, was also applied in Nazism, Soviet Russia, Japanese internment camps, McCarthyism, and most recently, the War on Terror.
In contrast with feminist arguments historians like Clarke Garrett, Brian P. Levack, John Tedeschi, Matteo Duni, and Diane Purkiss pointed out that most witch trials and executions were conducted by local and secular authorities.
In-depth historical research regarding minor details of different types of magic, theological heresies, and political climate of The Reformation further revealed that Inquisitorial procedures greatly restrained witch hunting in Italy.
Scholars specializing in the Renaissance and Early Modern period such as Guido Ruggiero, Christopher F. Black, and Mary O'Neil also discussed the importance of proper procedures and sparse use of torture.
The low rate of torture and lawful interrogation, Black argued, means that trials tended to focus more on individual accusation, instead of groups.
][27] Historians who leaned toward the witch-hunt-restraining argument were more inclined to differentiate different Inquisitions, and often drew contrast between Italy versus Central Europe.